Old/New Testament
1 [a] Aaghh! Lonely is this city that once bustled with life;
Cheer is empty; like a widow, she is abandoned
and oh, so lonely.
She who was a princess, great among the nations,
has lost everything and been forced to serve as a slave.
2 Bawling, she weeps without constraint every night,
cries herself to sleep, bitter tears streaming down her cheeks.
Her former friends ignore her;
there is no one there to share her sorrow;
Companions contend and have betrayed her;
friends have been unfaithful and turned against her as enemies.
3 Carried off to a foreign place, Judah is exiled in misery
and debased by affliction and hard labor;
She cannot find rest living among the pagan nations.
She tried to run and hide, but in her distress pursuers have overcome her.
4 Despair permeates the very dust of Zion’s roads.
Nobody walks them in anticipation of celebration and worship.
No one enters the city’s desolate gates bringing offerings or sacrifices to God.
The religious leaders are heavyhearted,
And the virgin women despair.
It’s so bitter for dear Zion!
5 Enemies of Jerusalem have gained the upper hand.
Her foes prosper against her.
The Eternal One has caused her sorrow because of her rebellions,
for she acted against Him, willfully, again and again.
Even her little ones are taken away at the whim of her foes.
6 Faded beauty, this daughter Zion.
Her princely young men, like stags,
They have no place to graze, no strength to fight;
they fled to the woods,
Pursued mercilessly by hunters.
7 Gone are the days that she remembers, happy and precious;
Jerusalem wanders aimlessly and remembers what precious things she has lost—
Things from the old days of David, Solomon, and Josiah.
But now her people have fallen to her enemies,
And in this defeat by her enemies, no one ran to her aid,
and her enemies now snicker and gloat at her downfall.
8 Hideous must be Jerusalem’s crimes
that the city itself is now morally and ritually impure.
Those who once admired her now hate her.
They strip her naked and laugh.
All she can do is groan
and shrink back, ashamed.
9 Impurity clung to her inside the cover of her clothes.
She refused to consider anything but the present,
Never expecting her impurity would be revealed.
Nobody came forward with comfort—no one.
Lady Jerusalem: See, Eternal One, how badly I suffer
and how my enemies swell with pride.
The people of Judah and Jerusalem have had many opportunities to recognize their failings. Now they learn that their choices have grave consequences. For generations they have ignored the warnings and continued in idolatry, dependence upon foreign powers, and oppression of the less fortunate. Yes, the sacrifices in the temple have continued, but they have continually turned away from God. One prophet after another has called them back to a life of trust in the Lord, but they still look to others for assurance. Time has run out.
10 Jabbing and fondling,
mauling all her treasures, the enemy takes stock.
Foreign nations enter even her holy place,
claiming what You decided was off-limits
And forbidden to them—Your temple.[b]
11 Kept in hunger,
her people are desperate for food.
Once prosperous, they trade her treasures
for nourishment of any kind.
Lady Jerusalem: Look, Eternal One—
really see how hated I’ve become.
12 Look around, you who pass by and go about your business.
Is there any sorrow as great as mine?
Any pain as great as that which has been forced on me?
No. Because my pain comes from the Eternal.
It is His judgment, rendered on the day of His intense anger.
13 My bones burn with the wrath of God,
the fire sent from on high.
He laid a trap, then left me,
turned me back to the destruction,
With the shakes, constantly sick and faint.
14 Now the burden of all my wrongs is a yoke.
God has laid them upon my shoulders,
Bound them around my neck.
He has made sure I’m too weak to support them.
The Lord gave me into the hand of an enemy.
I could not resist.
15 Overwhelmed by none other than God,
the Lord has determined that all my warriors are worthless.
He has summoned a meeting of those who are against me
to crush the young men who would protect me,
And He has stomped lovely Judah, virgin daughter,
like grapes in a winepress.
16 Pity, my eyes won’t stop their crying; I can’t stop.
There is no one nearby to comfort me or revive my spirit,
No one to pull me up.
My children know it—they’re left empty,
The enemy has won.
17 Quietly, Zion spreads out her hands, pleading for comfort.
But no one comes. The Lord forbids it.
God has commanded Jacob’s enemies
to surround her.
Jerusalem has become their foe;
she is an impurity among them.
The poetic imagery is violently and sexually disturbing. Zion’s captors enter her sacred area and cart off her children. She has been unfaithful to her husband, the Eternal One.
18 Lady Jerusalem: Right and true is the Eternal One.
I am the one in the wrong: I have rebelled against His law.
Listen all of you peoples.
See how much I have suffered;
My handsome men and my gentle women, unmarried and unprotected,
have marched away into captivity.
19 Summoning my lovers brings nothing—
nothing but pain in their betrayal.
The old guard, religious and political leaders,
have died starving here in the city;
Their search for sustenance failed.
20 Take account, Eternal One, of me; how miserable I am.
My belly growls and turns;
My heart is wrung out like a rag; my faults and failings are to blame
because I have been rebellious.
Death is everywhere in the homes;
the sword makes women childless in the streets.
21 Uncaring, with no compassion from others,
they know how badly I suffer.
O how alone I am.
My enemies gloat, and You have brought about my misery,
So happy to know I’m in pain.
But You, O God, will make them as bad off as I.
22 Vindicate me and judge their evil actions
and make them suffer,
As You’ve made me suffer
for all my wrongdoings.
I’m a wreck, and I groan with a faint heart.
2 Aaghh! How could the Lord surround Zion in a cloud of His anger
as if He has cast the beauty of Israel down from heaven to earth?
Majestic Israel, God’s footstool,
is debased by God’s anger in a moment of wrath.
2 Buried beneath the dust,
Jacob’s houses have been swallowed.
The Lord did this without mercy,
shattering her fortresses.
God brought down to the ground daughter Judah,
and defiled her kingdom and her leaders.
3 Cut down by God’s anger,
the pride and strength of Israel falls;
He withdrew His right hand and stood back and allowed Israel’s enemies
to wreak havoc in the land.
God has burned and consumed Jacob
in an insatiable fire.
4 Deployed like an enemy, God stood poised against Judah—
bow bent, right hand clinched—crashing down
On everything that we admired
among daughter Zion’s tents.
The anger of the Lord whipped like flickering flames to reduce it to ashes.
5 Enemy of ours—our God—who would have thought?
Yet the Lord chewed up Israel,
Swallowed its mighty palaces;
He spit out fortresses and reduced them to dust.
God increased suffering and sorrow
to a fever pitch in daughter Judah.
6 Felling His own dwelling like a garden hut,
God destroyed His meeting place;
He did away with the sacred festivals and Sabbaths in Zion,
and in fierce anger
He ignored and spurned our leaders—
our king and priests alike.
7 God disdained the most sacred religious spots—
His altar, His sanctuary, the centerpiece of our tradition.
The Lord gave our enemy full charge of the city,
palaces and all.
And in the temple itself, the Eternal’s house,
they hoot and holler as if it’s one of our sacred festivals.
For generations the Judeans have looked upon the temple in their midst as a comfort and even a protection. Jeremiah stood before the temple and preached to these same people that they should not trust in the lying words of others: “Change your ways and stop what you are doing, and I will let you live in this land. Do not rely on the misguided words, ‘The temple of the Eternal, the temple of the Eternal, the temple of the Eternal,’ as if the temple’s presence alone will protect you” (Jeremiah 7:3–4). Even good things from God can be misconstrued to turn us away from Him. Now the temple itself will be brought low because of the hard hearts of the people.
8 Hesitating not for one moment,
the Eternal measured across the city of daughter Zion;
Unrelenting, He was determined to destroy,
to bring the city down with rampart and wall
To its knees in rubble and grief.
9 Into the earth, Jerusalem’s defenses, the bars and gates, are sunk—
her leaders, both king and prince, scattered among surrounding nations,
Gone to foreign places.
Now there is no law, no wise instruction;
The prophets receive no divine visions;
who can see the Eternal’s way?
10 Jerusalem elders of daughter Zion are mute,
dispensing no precious wisdom.
They sit on the ground distraught, clad in sackcloth;
they hurl dust on their heads.
The young maidens of Jerusalem hang their heads
down to the ground.
11 Knowing the fate of Zion, my insides are in turmoil and pour out
for Jerusalem, the devastation of the daughter of my people.
I can’t see because of the tears for the children in the streets—
I can’t stop crying for infants and toddlers too weak to wail.
My people are destroyed.
12 Little Children: Mother, grain and wine—where is it?
Like the wounded,
collapsing in the city streets,
They pine and die
on their mother’s breast.
13 My dear daughter Jerusalem,
how can I tell your tragedy?
To what can I liken this disgrace?
O virgin daughter Zion, would that I could comfort you.
Who can heal your massive injury
that is as deep and wide as the sea?
14 Nothing but vanity from your prophets—
nothing but worthlessness from them;
They never warned and exposed you to correct your wicked ways
so that things would go well again with no captivity.
Instead, they told divine oracles of lies and deceit,
that everything was fine.
15 On your head, now, passersby heap scorn;
they wag their fingers, shake their heads at daughter Jerusalem.
Passersby: Is this the city everyone thought was so great—
a city of perfect beauty and
Earth’s pride and joy?
16 Pursuing you, your enemies cut you down.
Enemies: Ha! Would the day ever come? We’ve got her now!
Look, we’ve swallowed her whole, destroyed her.
We waited anxiously for today,
and we made it happen!
17 Question the Eternal One about what He has done.
He determined—punished according to the term and tenets
He laid down so long ago.
He executed fierce destruction without pity
And made your enemy glad.
He has made them prevail with might.
18 Raise your cry to the Lord with all your might!
Take no relief; be ceaseless in grief.
Lady Jerusalem: Oh walls, may your stones cry out,
cry out for daughter Zion;
Make rivers with tears of sorrow, rushing.
Do not cease from your weeping.
19 Stand up and yell in the night with all your heart;
call to God even while the city sleeps during the night watch;
Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord!
Lift your hands and plead to Him for the lives of your children,
For the babies weak with hunger
dying on every street corner.
20 Take heed, Eternal One!
Look what You’ve done and to whom you have done this.
Can it be—women eat their offspring, even their tender newborns;
and in the most sacred places of the Eternal,
Priests and prophets are slaughtered?
21 Unable to go on, young and old fall,
lying in the dusty streets.
My strong young men and women, all unmarried,
are attacked and killed by Your sword in Your anger.
You are responsible for this mayhem and misery.
You, God, slew without pity.
22 Victims all, You summoned those terrors surrounding me
as if You were calling together a sacred festival.
On the day of Your divine wrath there was no escapee,
not even one survivor.
The ones whom I raised up and made numerous,
my enemy made a complete end of them.
He who embodied the sins of the world carries His own blood into the holy presence.
10 We have seen how the law is simply a shadow of the good things to come. Since it is not the perfect form of these ultimate realities, the offering year after year of these imperfect sacrifices cannot bring perfection to those who come forward to worship. 2 If they had served this purpose, wouldn’t the repetition of these sacrifices have become unnecessary? If they had worked—and cleansed the worshipers—then one sacrifice would have taken away their consciousness of sin. 3 But these sacrifices actually remind us that we sin again and again, year after year. 4 In the end, the blood of bulls and of goats is powerless to take away sins. 5 So when Jesus came into the world, He said,
Sacrifices and offerings were not what You wanted,
but instead a body that You prepared for Me.
6 Burnt offerings and sin offerings
were not what pleased You.
7 Then I said, “See, I have come to do Your will, God,
as it is inscribed of Me in the scroll of the book.”[a]
8 Now when it says that God doesn’t want and takes no real pleasure in sacrifices, burnt offerings, and sin offerings (even though the law calls for them), 9 and follows this with “See, I have come to do Your will,”[b] He effectively takes away the first—animal sacrifice—in order to establish the second, more perfect sacrifice. 10 By God’s will, we are made holy through the offering of the body of Jesus the Anointed once and for all time.
11 In the first covenant, every day every officiating priest stands at his post serving, offering over and over those same sacrifices that can never take away sin. 12 But after He stepped up to offer His single sacrifice for sins for all time, He sat down in the position of honor at the right hand of God. 13 Since then, He has been waiting for the day when He rests His feet on His enemies’ backs,[c] as the psalm says. 14 With one perfect offering, Jesus has perfected forever those who are being made holy, 15 as the Holy Spirit keeps testifying to us through the prophet Jeremiah. After he says,
16 “But when those days are over,” says the Eternal One, “I will make
this kind of covenant with the people of Israel:
I will put My laws in their hearts
and write them upon their minds,”[d]
then He adds,
17 I will erase their sins and wicked acts out of My memory
as though they had never existed.[e]
18 When there is forgiveness such as this, there is no longer any need to make an offering for sin.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.